Last we saw the Downton crew, Bates had murder in his eyes, Edith a bun in the oven and Lord Grantham was headed to the New World with Thomas Barrow in tow.

The season is winding down, with this the penultimate episode and big questions remain unanswered: Will Mary find a new partner? Will Bates kill Mr. Green? Will Rose ever grow up (or go to India with her parents)? Will we have yet another plodding hour of rewarmed drama?

So as the annual church bazaar hurtles toward the abbey will we get our answers? Read on.

Falling in love again

But first, back to the pigsty. Lady Mary, Tom Branson and Lady Edith (!) visit Tim Drewe who took over the Yew Tree farm after his father’s death in episode four. Tom and Mary ask Drewe to take over caring for the pigs, while Edith seems to be paying him a lot of attention.

Drewe, acknowledging that it will be more work but also that he has a debt to pay off to the Crawleys, accepts the job.

“Works like old age, mi’lady, the worst thing in the world, except for the alternative,” he tells Lady Mary. (Hint to readers: Don’t let your bosses read that part.)

So should this appeal to the sensibility of Charles Blake, who seems way too posh to be an anti-establishment figure? Violet, the Dowager Countess, remarks during afternoon tea that the hire must make the Crawleys seem devoted to “sentimental bosh” for valuing the Drewe family connection to the farm.

Shown from left: Julian Ovenden as Charles Blake and Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary get more cozy together in part seven, season four of "Downton Abbey."Nick Briggs

And here is where Blake moves to the head of the suitor class: Mary defends him,
“Mr. Blake has a softer side than we first gave him credit for,” she says.

And if it’s true that having a dog might get you more dates, taking to your intended's baby son like a duck to water is the way to melt Mary’s hardened heart.

Blake picks up a crying George from Nanny and the Mary looks enthralled.

The fussing sends the Dowager Countess sputtering from the room (but she did admit earlier in the season that she only saw her children for an hour a day).

What will Bates do?
After watching the obvious discomfort of wife Anna around the vicious valet Mr. Green last week, John Bates seems intent on dispatching Green.

Now with Green back at the Abbey as Lord Tony Gillingham is visiting with hopes of still courting Mary, Bates has clearly decided to take matters into his own hands.

He’s almost cruel with Anna in the boot room, gauging her reaction to Green’s visit, as if to confirm his suspicions.

"You liked him so much when he first came,” he says. “You thought he was funny.” We can only assume Bates is doing this—painful as it is—to confirm his suspicions. His face hardens when Anna says she can’t remember, and walks off.

Anna is horrified to learn that Gillingham plans to return to Downton. She confides to Mary about Green’s identity, but makes Mary promise not to act on the news that Green is the rapist.

Mary tries to call off the visit to no avail but also wants to go to the police. Anna reminds her that Bates will retaliate and will be in jeopardy of another prison stay.

Downstairs, Green is eating with the servants and talking about London. Bates asks him where he lives when he’s in town (warning light!). Foolish Green boasts about his prime location near Piccadilly.

The battle for Lady Mary

With Napier clearly out of contention, it’s up to Blake and Gillingham to win Mary over and the white gloves come off.

He slips behind in the race by choosing to moon over Mary, almost calling out his affection for her.

“Really, Charles, are you a pig expert as well?” he continues. When Mary complements Blake’s skill that evening, Gillingham looks upset.

The next day, we learn that Blake and Napier are leaving and catching a lift with Gillingham. “Pure self interest,” says Gillingham to Mary, explaining why he’s giving them a ride. “I couldn’t leave Charles here alone with you.”

He asks Mary to come see him again, but she doesn’t see the point. “I’ve made up my mind to call off the engagement,” says Gillingham. Mary tells him in no uncertain terms that she’s not on the market.

Rose’s big news

Lily James as Lady Rose MacClare finds her whirlwind romance with a jazz singer comes to a halt.Nick Briggs

Isobel Crawley and Tom Branson take a trip to Thirsk where Isobel hopes to rekindle Tom’s interest in politics by picking up a few political tomes at the local bookstore.

They part to run separate errands and Tom steps into a pastry shop adjoining a hotel’s tea room. While the pretty shopkeeper and petit fours appear to catch his eye, something else has. It’s Rose having tea with bandleader Jack Ross.

Rose, who has reinventing the cliche of throwing caution to the wind, strokes Ross’ cheek as the scandalized patrons stare.

When Ross tells her not to do that, she tells him not to be so self-conscious. Okay, let’s spell it out for the sheltered princess: “A black singer with the daughter of a marquis in a north Yorkshire town?” he asks. “Why should we attract any attention?”

Ross isn't immune to the huge societal barriers the couple will face.

“I hope we’re brave enough for this,” he says.

But Rose must be sneaking some of Tom’s liberal newspapers, or maybe I’m just not giving her enough credit when she asks “Isn’t it time people knew that there are bigger and better values than the mean-spirited ones they live by?”

While Branson doesn’t interrupt, he later informs Mary.

Mary confronts Rose about her secret affair. “All I want is for you not to lose control of your life,” says Mary.

Rose calls Mary a racist.

“I love him, and I won’t listen to any imperialist nonsense about racial purity and how he should be horsewhipped for daring to dream,” replies Rose.

“I’m going to marry him, Mary, and I don’t care what it costs, and I won’t keep it a secret—not once I’ve told Mummy. I want to see her face crumble when she finds out.”

Rose later tells Mary that she is engaged. Mary quickly sets off for London with Anna. Leaving Bates alone.

Mary arrives in London to see Ross. She tells him that marriage is a challenge, even when everyone wants it. And is Ross ready to live with how family, society will try to tear the couple apart “every hour of every day?

She also says that Rose might want to shock her mother more than anything else.

“It may comes as something of a relief for you to hear that I will not be marrying Rose,” says Ross. “I don’t want to spoil her life.”

He loves Rose too much too subject her to a world where people will point and jeer.

He says he loves her and wants her to be happy. “It doesn’t mean I think it’s right,” he says. “I wouldn’t give in if we lived in even a slightly better world.”

Mary replies, “It may surprise you, Mr. Ross, but if we lived in a better world, I wouldn’t want you to.”

(And Rose isn’t letting Mary off the hook anytime soon; at the bazaar she compares her cousin to her mother.)

Death comes on a train?

After Anna tells Bates she’ll be joining Lady Mary in London, Bates asks Carson for some time off to go to York for the day. For no reason. Maybe he wants a pudding.

So will Bates kill Mr. Green? As long as he gets away with it and the show spares us “Law & Order: Downton Abbey,” spin-off of another trial for Bates, I’m fine with it.

But maybe Bates really does want that pudding and Mary’s intervention with Gillingham to fire Green will work. Probably not.

Here come the village people

Elizabeth McGovern as Lady Cora Crawley, Countess of Grantham, who is mistress of ceremonies for the church bazaar.Nick Briggs

It’s high spring and time for the annual church bazaar when the residents of the village come to Downton Abbey.

Everyone looks like Easter eggs in many shades of pastels while they mingle over lawn games and ice creams with the lord and ladies.

With Robert in America trying to extract his brother-in-law from the Teapot Dome scandal, Cora is left to handle all the arrangements with Rose’s help, who is so not thrilled with the assignment.

Lord Grantham arrives back in time for the bazaar, relieved to have missed all the planning and even more relieved to be able to have a drink. Silly Americans and their Prohibition.

Gillingham, looking serious, shows up at the bazaar and tells Mary that Green is dead. “He was in Piccadilly and he slipped or stumbled — fell into the road,” says Gillingham.

Mary runs off and tells Anna, who pieces together the timing of Bates’s “trip to York” and Green’s death.

Blake returns for the bazaar as well. Mary, trusting his advice, asks him what he would do if he knew a man committed a crime, but he believed it justified. “I suspect I’d say nothing,” says Blake.

But he didn't come back to just be a sounding board.

“I find, perhaps to my surprise, since I left I can’t think of anything but you,” he says.

He asks her for a chance, and she tells him that it might be kinder to let him off the hook now.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t allow that,” he says. “Not without putting up a fight.”

It’s time for Blake to leave, and Gillingham asks for a ride to London. Mary goes to see them off, and as they depart, Lord Grantham says, “What sort of ménage has that turned into while I’ve been away?”

Hugh Bonneville as Lord Grantham and Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess and Lord Grantham is relieved to be back at Downton.Nick Briggs

And yes, Edith is still mopey (but with good reason). At the bazaar, Edith wonders if she’ll ever see Michael Gregson again.

"Sometimes I feel that God doesn’t want me to be happy,” says Edith. The Dowager Countess says that all life is a series of problems that we solve, again and again, until we die. And on that happy note, she suggests getting an ice cream.

Speaking of Edith

Edith having fled the abortionist is still trying to find a way to have her baby and society’s good graces, too. She hatches a plan to have Drewe and his wife raise the baby, but her Aunt Rosamund talks her out of it.

Instead, why don’t they go to Switzerland under the guise of improving their French, she suggests. While there Edith can have the baby in secret and a local couple can adopt it.

Edith reluctantly agrees when Rosamund tells Cora, who seems not to question how her daughter can be sobbing one moment and wanting to run off to the continent the next.

The Dowager Countess, however has a much higher level of scrutiny. She presses both Rosamund and Edith over tea, and Rosamund is deliberately vague.

“I see I’ll have to take the slow path, ” the dowager says.

She adds up the pieces of Rosamund’s phone call about how Edith is to be cherished, and then the sudden trip to improve her French, that there’s something more going on.

“Rosamund has no interest in French,” the dowager says, pointedly. “If she wishes to be understood by a foreigner, she shouts.”

Violet asks for the truth. “If I told you the truth, granny, you’d never speak to me again,” says Edith. “Then you have told me the truth,” replies Violet.

The Dowager Countess agrees with Rosamund that keeping the child with Drewe is a bad idea. “To keep the child here would be like a permanent sword of Damocles inches from your head.”

And he’s stood up to Thomas Barrow and defeated pouty footman Jimmy in the Ring the Bell contest.

Good for Molesley, let’s hope Baxter is right and he’ll continue to come up in the world.

And still, we haven’t learned what Baxter did that has her in Barrow’s debt. While she tries to uncover details about Anna and Bates, she doesn’t share what she’s learned with Barrow, who goes right back to intimidating her.

Molesley, nearby, tells Barrow to leave her alone. “We don’t want any bullying brought back from overseas,” he says. And then he offers his arm to Baxter, who accepts.

She also thinks poorly of the local lord but Tom tries to show her at the bazaar and while conveniently repairing her car on the side of the road, that the family are not stuck-up elitists.

Could she be what anchors him to “Downton Abbey” instead of setting sail for America?

Isobel Crawley, a window, has drawn and rejected a love interest before in the form of Dr. Clarkson.

Penelope Wilton as Isobel Crawley.Nick Briggs

But during a luncheon at the Dowager Countess’ home, a guest, Mr. Merton is interested in the do-gooder nurse.

Merton, a widower, steps in it a bit when walking Isobel home and asks about her son’s occupation. Her dead, beloved son Matthew. Isobel recovers gracefully and Merton later sends a lovely floral arrangement to Isobel in care of the Dowager Countess.

Violet read the card and is a bit piqued that her arrangement from Merton isn’t as nice.
The many loves of Alfred

No matter how hard I wish and hope, the Jimmy-Ivy- Alfred-Daisy rectangle keeps coming back. Alfred has completed his training at The Ritz in London and has been offered a position.

He returns to the village for his father’s funeral, but writes to Ivy asking her to marry him.

Ivy, who admires Alfred for his initiative to move to London, but does not love him, turns the proposal down. Daily fumes over Alfred’s broken heart, but after a picnic with her former father-in-law Mr. Mason, decided to part with Alfred on good terms.

She brings him a basket packed with goodies and admits she loved him once, she no longer has those feelings. They part as best friends.

Really! After all of this, none of these people are a couple! Farewell, Alfred. Please don’t come back.
Random Thoughts

• I can’t wait for the return of Shirley Maclaine as Mrs. Levinson and the debut of Paul Giamatti as Harold Levinson, Cora’s mother and brother, next week. I hope the show doesn’t delve into America-bashing but instead has fun with the difference between the wealth classes of the U.S. and Britain. Mother and son will be visiting to attend Lady Rose’s coming out ball.

• The show got the story of the “Teapot Dome” scandal spot on — and be honest, if American History class in high school was the last time you’d thought of it, could you have summed it up as well as the Dowager Countess?

• When Violet complaints about being cooped up after her illness, she compares her situation to Dr. Manette, the Dickens character from “A Tale of Two Cities” who spent 18 years in prison.

Best of the Dowager Countess

“I always feel that greeting betrays such a lack of self worth,” reaming on Isobel’s greeting “It’s only me.”

“No life appears rewarding if you think too much about it,” at dinner when Tony Gillingham mentions he's taken time to think about this life.

“Yes, but you’re better than nothing,” referring to Isobel.

So how do you think the season will wrap up? Any plans to have a tea party or ball to say farewell to this batch of episodes? Tell us all about it in the comments.